


not exactly orpheus and eurydice

by LilyGilt (Yirry)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gods, M/M, Mpreg, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rescue, Resurrection, Underworld, crypts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 05:36:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20304310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yirry/pseuds/LilyGilt
Summary: Masaot, as a devoted follower of the Deity of Death, knows how to supplicate the god to release one of his subjects.For that Deity also has dominion over the creation of life.[tagged Major Character death but this isnotpermanent.]





	not exactly orpheus and eurydice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Soulstoned](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soulstoned/gifts).

> [while this could definitely have been pornier, I hope that some of the spirit in which it was written comes across anyway. Happy exchange!]

Masaot was not a priest of the Unified Deity, but he came from a long line of priests and a family with many religious branches, and so he did not weep at the state funeral for Crail, the prince's son and heir.

It might well have been a funeral for the state's death, not merely the state's mourning. Crail's death had not been an accident. The assassins of the emperor had dealt it as a rebuke to Crail's small, rebellious principality. The prince was old, and had no other sons. In the next generation, their state would be absorbed into the Empire, and disappear.

They needed Crail, and so Masaot did not weep, because he intended to win Crail back from the Deity who governed the giving of life and death.

So it was that he knelt before Crail's newly-closed-over tomb, in the royal crypt, and prayed clear-eyed.

He was naked.

*

In the underworld, he stood before the throne, and knelt a second time.

Abstractly, he observed the design of the throne; wide enough that a second Being the size of the one who now occupied it could have shared it with the first. The centre of the seat had a ridge that ran from front to back, dividing it, and the Deity straddled it. It was something almost human in its symbolism and Masaot thought: when I return, I will cause the design to be made and set in the Temple of One.

He lifted his head to his god.

As he had not wept in the crypt, he did not shudder now. There, the deity had appeared to him in Its aspect of Death. He had kissed the gaping skull with a worshipful tongue. He had stroked sloughing flesh. He had received into his body a phallus hard as bone, as stone, and screamed through his worship until the pounding of his heart had drowned out his own voice in his ears.

He had spilled his seed as his life spilled out of him.

And so he had come to remind the Deity of his offering, and be reminded in turn.

* 

This shape of the Deity was familiar to him from his upbringing: limbs plump and ripe and generous, almost obscenely vital. 

"My devotee," the Deity greeted him. 

"You honour me," he said, with a voice that barely bore signs of screaming. All bodies were borrowed here.

"So I have."

"I come to beg for my prince," Masaot said simply. The first part of the ritual had been observed and recorded; this was the unknown country, and he did not know what he must do here. "My Deity, without him our people will scatter. The Gods of the Empire will overtake our temples. We need him, for ourselves and to worship you."

"Are you so faithless, then, to forget me within a generation or more?"

There was no right answer. Masaot struggled. "You see us at our beginning and our end. It is your decree that we all must end. Body, spirit - and yes, faith."

He lowered his head again.

"And if I let your prince return, and kept you here?"

"I do not need to see my people's survival to be glad of it, if that is what you allow."

"It is not," the Deity said.

He looked up again.

"You may both return, if you have the strength for it. But Masaot, serve me well hereafter, and remember no imprint of flesh except for mine." The Deity paused. "Except this one."

It waved forth another shade, and Masaot's heart leapt. It was Crail, pale even in these surrounds, skin puckered with the poisoner's concoction.

"You must carry him to the upper world."

"How should I do it?" Masaot asked.

"With your body, devotee. Let him enter you and _bear_ him hence."

"My prince," Masaot said to Crail, "allow me to be your vessel."

It was not as intense, nor as painful, as being fucked by a god. Rather, for a moment Crail would seem not to be there at all, and then his cock seemed to materialise without movement within Masaot's body. Masaot wondered if it were the same for Crail - they existed on the same terms, here - but when he drew breath to ask, Crail shook his head, half-smiling.

They had not been close in life, or perhaps Crail did not think so. Masaot had adored him. The worship he gave to the ground Crail walked on was second only to the worship he offered the Deity.

There was a look of immense strain on Crail's face, as though achieving orgasm was no easier for him than to turn himself alive again. Then a look of relief spread across his face, so vast that it gave Masaot the echoing sense of an orgasm, and a cool feeling spread through Masaot's body. Spread, and spread, and - kept going. To Masaot's wonder and unease, his prince's ghostly body followed his cock into Masaot's own body, swelling his whole abdomen into a great dome, settling at last.

Other shades pulled Masaot to his feet, where he struggled to get his balance. The Deity pointed, and a path unfolded.

Masaot did not dare to bow or kneel again, lest he could not stand after that. "Thank you ever after," he said, and began to walk.

Slowly he learned how best to stagger upwards. The path was full of rocks and gaps. 

As he walked, his burden grew.

It was not a metaphor. The spirit of Crail increased in size and pressure; Masaot's distended belly seemed to him bigger than the rest of him, as though he were nothing but thin limbs attached to the great rough sphere. When he rested for a while, the shape stayed. When he moved onwards, his abdomen swelled again.

At last he saw the opening to the upper world; and now he felt a terrible pressure. 

The prince was almost ready to emerge with him into the world.

But it could not happen until they reached the threshold. Masaot staggered on, fighting agony and whatever principles of weight and motion applied here. He screamed as the prince turned within him, and could feel a skull press at his rectum, having hollowed him out entirely to this point. 

Inglorious, gory, the single body becoming two half staggered, half rolled across the portal.

Two bodies lay entwined and gasping in the prince's crypt.


End file.
